THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
Broken Words
I am starting to lose myself again, I’ve had the burning need to lock myself away somewhere alone and just write until I’ve processed my entire life for a week now. I had a series of epiphanies that cracked open a box inside and brought something into the forefront through Scribe. Suddenly words were taking over my brain, if I stopped writing and closed my eyes I saw them and heard them at the same time but in different ways, incessant stories, triggers, memories, reminders, realisations and connections were suddenly being made faster than we could write them down.
The power and fury behind it all would have been terrifying if it hadn’t been so all consuming that I didn’t have time to notice.
It came to a head Monday night with my whole body shuddered over and over, the tension was building and I knew I was about to explode. Something was breaking free and I had to stop it, sleep was impossible, I had lost control. Two Valium’s, music, the buzz of a mosquito, hours passed like minutes and still words echoed behind all of it like background noise. She was writing her days out loud again, writing into the night, the minutes, narrating the present. Overseeing everything, overseeing everyone and seemingly all at once, it was deafening.
Eventually sleep came to break up the madness. At least the Valium stops us dreaming.
I woke up in the morning and they were all still there, the words wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t even write them down, I had no time. There were places to be, people to talk to today and I had to be normal, I had to get them to stop.
I jumped in the shower and as the water streamed down my face it too turned into words and I watched as they flowed over me, through me, I could see them swirling over my skin, running down my body. Words exploding with emotion and meaning, words we needed to write but I couldn’t bring them to life I couldn’t set them free right now.
I was trapped, with a shampoo bottle in my hand and the most important words in the world just trickling down the drain. I don’t know how long I was in the shower, by the time I got out the water was cool and my fingers had turned to prunes.
Somehow we got dressed, put on makeup and drove the car. Somehow the morning tea we attended worked, somehow the volume was turned down on our resident narrator long enough that we survived the hour, partook in conversation and appeared relatively normal. I barely remember it but I know they’d asked about our cancer and I could hear us replying about scan results and feeling positive, I’d somehow forgotten about the cancer, we missed an important oncologist appointment on Monday because we forgot it was a thing and took our son for a haircut instead. Luckily the oncologist rang and we did it over the phone. We need to use our calendars better, then we need to look at them.
Therapy was after the morning tea and it was chaotic. After an hour and a half drive the cacophony of voices all murmuring, whispering, laughing excitedly, nervously chattering amongst themselves reached fever pitch.
It felt like everyone living inside my brain was there all at once just hiding in the shadows waiting for something, nobody wanted to stand up but I couldn’t filter them out and they couldn’t filter me out. It was messy. So much to say and yet we couldn’t say anything.
Scribe had finally fallen silent, perhaps waiting, watching, maybe she was just exhausted. None of us seemed to be able to be in control of our thoughts for long enough to think straight.
I was so blurry I couldn’t finish a sentence, everyone had an opinion and their thoughts were interrupting me, flying too fast to catch let alone hold on to. I know M had said something profound but I couldn’t hear it. I think we did talk about some stuff but I don’t know now, I almost need to record sessions so I can actually remember them but I know if we tried to do that nobody would ever say a word.
I’ve gotta go to bed now, real life continues tomorrow and I’m expected to be a part of it. Time for more Valium, let’s see if we can make it through this without developing a drug habit…
7 Comments on “Broken Words”
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THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 
Reblogged this on MiddleoftheHeart and commented:
In places of last retreat rumination holds Court,
seemingly lost and seemingly found,
discarded,
disregarded,
no loss no found
as easy to hang on to as not,
matters not,
inconsequential or so it seems,
no purpose yet always anew,
much ado about nothing,
ruminate roaming,
here just for you,
an anchor or buoy you shall be,
keep you up just enough to breathe,
water board boarding unbounded,
and after all is said and gone,
discarded,
disregarded,
it matters and matters not,
never even to be or not to be,
water soaked thoughts always afloat,
never spoken out loud,
left where lost is also found,
discarded,
disregarded,
silent numbness pouring wet,
rotten dry sighs high in the chest,
not hear to be heard or there to be in their midst,
forgotten,
a clutched at hand,
a me memory not had,
rumination would much rather be,
anything else than a place of last retreat
I am sparing a thought and wish for Beautiful Colours for Colours of Madness who’s gifts are unbounded visually and sounded out too. Miraculous.
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hey there CofM – just a note – perhaps, musical or even a pound note or two, well maybe not having been to B&BloodyQ – I walked there too (not far really) so I could buy some scented night stock seeds (I find that the grown plants don’t smell at all) but ended up with all blummin sorts of things, like a huge and I mean massive plant pot, outdoor lighting and a bag of compost. Then, on getting outside the place, I remembered that I had walked there. So, while it’s not far, it bloody well is when you’re carting a proper Bill and Ben biggestsize plant pot, a big bag of compost and stupid lighting (which I only bought because they had one of them ‘try me push buttons’ on the flashy box for flashy lights. I felt properly suckered. Anyways, and lucky for me some builder men I know were there too so I got a lift (I say lift, I was in the back of their flat bed bouncing about in the sand and gravel, they had great fun watching me hang on to the plant pot as they swung around the corners and round abouts, hey ho… Lads, eh!)
Any Road, all is well and the outdoor lights actually look ace – they’re on a twisted willow tree by my caravan.
Did I mention that I live in a caravan? Maybe, not….
Well, that’s my note so…. I heard it as one of them F flat sharp thingies that are really an E (or is it a G – is there such a thing as a G; G-string…. ta dah!! lol)
yous crossed my mind… because of your absence that’s all… I worry to keep some of mine busy (shhh, don’t tell…)
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🪴😂 Ah that made me laugh!
The outdoor lights sound wonderful, just need a hammock underneath to laze in and a guitar in your hand now.
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Well, do you remember that I told you that I have very bad eye sight?
Well, I buy poundshop specs so I can read and write, yeah know them magnifying glasses in that you wear.
Well, I got some that are x4 magnifying power.
Well, there I was reading and all of sudden a gigantic monster came out of nowhere and tried to eat me – in a panic I threw the book I was reading at the monster, hitting and walloping myself in the face and knocking my x4 specs to the floor only to realise that my monster was a midgey had landed on the lens of my glasses..
This is probably lost in translation but….
Wishing you lots of… Well, perspectives on this matter, the x4 specs sure make stuff quite a bit different, I now find….
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Bah ha ha!! Sorry, that mental image is hilarious! Glad the monster turned out to be tiny and harmless 🤣
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so glad to hear/read you laughing … at me, cheeky bugger… LOL
btw the glasses got broke too, although I think I’ll get a x3 pair when I next go to pound land (where everything costs £5 now)….
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I wish lol lol …. I’m a right scaredy cat, anything 6inch off the floor and I’m going home and as for guitars – I could probably hold one but I never got passed the triangle really and even holding that up to hit it made me dizzy and I’d miss it (not kidding) several decades, (like 4 of them,) and me having mishaps passed before I learned I don’t have depth perception – my sisters (and everyone else) were in stitches with laughter when we played rounders and even today, the lad’s knicked name me Squint Eastwood.
Incidently, I did like playing the triangle even if I only hit it once in every four goes. What a good fucking laugh it’d create – I got banned from going to the music (what do yeah call it, err Orchestra) for being too disruptive – which, also incidently, (not) I became absolutely brilliant at – tah da…..
So, there we have it… Mr Bean as Clint in
The Good, The Bad and the What the Fuck Happened There….
Box Office hit….. (if I could see to hit it, that is)…..
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